In this article, I’m going to give you an introduction to the new Media Player module for Moodle. It’s a flexible, robust and feature-rich method of deploying video in Moodle as an activity.

The Media Player module for Moodle using Searchbar and Playlist features

In November 2009, I started the FLV Player module for Moodle project. It was a way of deploying video in Moodle that was robust, standards compliant and above all easy to use for non-developers. It’s been a great success and I’ve have a lot of feedback from teachers, course content developers and admins. As a result of this, I’ve decided to update the module and include a number of new features. I’ve developed this new version as a separate and distinct module to avoid teachers and course content developers having to redeploy existing instances of the FLV Player module due to conflicts between the old and some of the new module’s settings.

You can already deploy video in Moodle. Why create a Module for it?

Moodle already has media filters that automatically convert HTML links to video files into instances of video player plugins, including Flash, QuickTime, RealPlayer and Windows Media Video. These work well for basic video deployment but don’t allow users to:

• Decide which video player plugin to use
• Control how the video player looks and behaves
• Allow you to deploy streaming video from a media server
• Do anything other than basic video playback functions

The Media Player module uses a single, extremely well developed and supported Flash video player (JW FLV Player) which effortlessly and gracefully handles the majority of web video formats, including FLV and F4V (Flash video), M4V and MOV (Quicktime) and MP4. It also supports the new and popular H.264 (Blu-ray) video CODEC and of course the most asked for feature in web video players, a variety of playlist formats.

Also, the only way to deploy captions with video is to hard-code them into the video file which is inflexible, doesn’t adjust when the video is scaled and doesn’t support multiple languages. External captions, on the other hand, are very flexible, easy to edit and easy to read at any magnification.

Obviously, many teachers and course content designers would like to do much more than basic video playback deployment for e-learning purposes and that’s where the Media Player module comes in.

But video is a resource. Why is Media Player an activity module?

If you only deploy video and nothing more, then it isn’t interactive and it would be unreasonable to call it an activity. The Media Player module includes options that have quite a high degree of interactivity such as Snapshot and Searchbar. As you’ll see while you read this article and try out the demos, it’s much more than a video player and will continue to support more features as they become available.

So what can I do with the Media Player module?

There’s a lot you can do with it and you can also use all of these features in combination with each other. The features are difficult to describe and I think it’s much better to see them demonstrated. See the links at the end of this article for some demos.

Here’s a list of the available options:

• External captions files: Supporting the popular SMIL and SubRip captions standards which allow very detailed control over how captions are displayed. You can also deploy the same video multiple times with different captions that play in the same playlist. Learners can immediately see what captions are available and there is no screen refresh when they select different ones. The captions can also be turned on or off at any time during playback.
• High and normal definition video files: You can deploy two versions of the same video, one normal definition and the other HD. Users can switch between the videos according to the speed of their Internet connection. If you use a streaming media server, you can also use automatic bandwidth checking so that the video player automatically finds the optimum definition of video to play.
• Info box: A consistent way to display information about the video being played (title, description, author and date deployed). An easy way to comply with copyright and licensing requirements.
• Livestream: This one if for live video broadcasts from media servers. Normally, users have to keep checking manually and refresh the web page every few seconds to see if a live broadcast has started. This feature automatically checks at defined intervals to see if the broadcast has begun without refreshing the web page and then plays the video so users are free to do other things while they’re waiting.
• Logobox: Include a logo with videos and also a link. It also supports Flash animation files so you can have an animated logo. The link could be to a web page or to a downloadable ZIP file.
• Metaviewer: Displays metadata information of the video files being played. It’s a convenient way for teachers and course content developers to find out essential information about the video file such as the exact width, height and duration.
• Playlists: By far the most asked for feature on video players is the ability to deploy several videos in one player. For example, if you have a video which is very long, it’s necessary to split it up into shorter (5 – 10 minute) sections or chapters and deploy them in order in one presentation. It supports thumbnail images, titles and descriptions for each item on the playlist. This means that users can easily return to a video and carry on watching from more or less where they left it. It’s also much easier to find a particular section without having to download the entire video. It supports several standard playlist formats including those produced by YouTube.com and iTunes.
• Search bar: Allows users to perform keyword searches on sites such as YouTube.com or, if you have a custom search script, anywhere you wish to define. It’s useful if you’d like users to do research without leaving your site.
• Snapshot: Allows users to take snapshots of frames of the video being played. The snapshots are stored in the course files directory and a link returned to the user. They could use this to post snapshots in course forums or blogs. The ability to store snapshots is controlled by creating a special directory in the Moodle course files directory for each user. To protect your server and users’ computers, the Snapshot feature follows the Flash Player security model and only allows users to take snapshots of videos hosted on the same site as the Moodle. It’s possible to enable other sites but only with a correctly configured crossdomain.xml policy file.
• Use YouTube.com as a video hosting service: Play videos directly from YouTube.com without any annoying advertising or popups and without users accidentally “clicking through” to the YouTube.com site. Only a small unintrusive YouTube.com logo appears in the bottom right of the screen. A cost-effective solution if you don’t mind making your video content publicly available and has the additional benefit of promoting your e-learning courses to a huge audience.

How can I start using it?

The Media Player module plugin for Moodle is open source and available to download and install from the project site hosted on Google Code.

Can I see a demo?

There’s an HD (1280 x 720) video tutorial, deployed using the Media Player module, demonstrating how easy it is to deploy video with it here (login as a guest).

There are more demos of the various features on my Moodle here (login as a guest).

In February 2009, I released the first beta version of the FLV Player plugin activity module for Moodle. It leverages the ubiquitous JW FLV Player and has been very popular among teachers and course content developers working with Moodle. I’m working on a substantial update for the module and in this article I’m going to write about some of the improvements and new features in it.

What has changed?

The most significant changes in the module will be:

• Support for alternative HD video streams.
• Support for audio descriptions.
• Uses simpler SWFObject 2.2 embed method.

Alternative HD video streams

The current FLV Player module can play any video format supported by Flash Player, which includes FLV, F4V, MOV,  MP4 and Youtube.com videos as well as MP3 and AAC audio files, and JPEG, PNG and GIF images (animation is not supported) and Flash animation files. See here for a full list of supported formats.

The new version of the player now supports an alternative HD video stream. This means that users can switch between normal and high definition video at the click of a mouse. All you need to do is provide two video files, one normal and one HD for the player to switch between. This is particularly useful for providing an alternative low definition stream to users with slow or intermittent internet connections.

Audio descriptions

This one’s still a bit buggy and doesn’t allow full control over the audio file. An audio description is a second, separate MP3 audio file that can be deployed alongside a video. It is synchronised with the video so that if you seek through it to a new point in time, the audio file plays at that point respectively. Users can switch the extra audio on and off as they like.

Audio descriptions are typically used for accessibility support for the visually impaired but can also be used for multi-language support, optional narrator’s voice overs, director’s commentaries, etc. I’m sure instructional designers, teachers and course content developers can come up with some creative applications for this feature.

SWFObject 2.2 embedding

Previous versions of the FLV Player module were a little “inconsistent” across different browsers and some suffered from bugs when it was necessary to perform Flash Player upgrades for users who don’t have Flash Player 9.0.115 or later installed. I’ve upgraded the module to SWFObject 2.2 and used a static embed method so that even with Javascript disabled, the video player will work, as well as detecting users’ Flash Player versions and informing them if they need to perform a Flash Player upgrade in order to view the video content, instead of automatically deploying Express Install, giving users more control. The new embed method has been successfully tested on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome.

A prompt to upgrade to the required Flash Player version.

Other features still supported

As well as these new features, the new version of the FLV Player will continue to support:

• HTML notes under the video playback window so you can put lecture notes, diagrams, graphs, tables, photos, links to files or pages, etc. on the same page.
• TimedText, RealText, ASX, ATOM, RSS and XSPF video caption formats (Users can now switch captions on and off).
• XML Playlists.
• Skins to change the visual appearance of the player (also includes support for XML based skins).
• Definable player control colours.
• Video poster images before playback commences.
• A variety of other JW FLV Player plugins (as a CSV list).
• Player configuration via an externally loaded XML file so that course-wide player policies can be established.

When will the new version be ready?

Many thanks to the brilliant developers at LongtailVideo.com for all their ideas and hard work. I’m still testing and trying to “iron out” the bugs in the FLV Player module but this should be finished in the next week or so. Unfortunately, there’s a bug in the Audio Description plugin, which is beyond my control and I’m waiting for the respective developer to resolve the issue. Hopefully, this will be soon.

Update…

After spending some time going over the various requirements for supporting the new plugins, the changes to the module code and the database table structure, I’ve realised that a number of the changes would “break” older instances on Moodle courses and lead to a lot of extra work for teachers and course content developers. With this in mind, I’ve decided to leave the FLV Player as it is for people who don’t need a feature-rich media player.

I’m now developing a very feature-rich “Media Player” module that will support most of the plugins currently available for the JW FLV Player as well as playlists and all the other features that we expect of a good web video application for e-learning. The module editing page will also be better organised to make it easier to use. The JW FLV Player plugins that I’m experimenting with at the moment are as follows:

• Audio Description
• Captions
• HD
• Info Box
• Live Stream
• Logo Box
• Meta Viewer
• Search Bar
• Snapshot

Please note that the Live Stream and Snapshot plugins require a server-side script and will not be enabled as standard for security reasons. The search Seach Bar plugin can use custom search scripts but only YouTube.com search will be enabled by default.

Here’s the Google Code project home page: http://code.google.com/p/moodle-mplayer/

…or Why don’t videos of the same type, i.e. AVI, MPEG, etc., work on everyone’s computers?

With broadband Internet connections becoming the norm, video on the web has become commonplace but beware, authoring video files for deployment on the web can be a minefield -  WMV, FLV, MOV, MP4, F4V – There’s a dizzying array of video formats these days. In this article, I’ll take you through some of the terminology and possible problems that you might face when including video in your on-line lessons.

Here is possibly the most common scenario for novice web designers and e-learning course content developers when using video: You’ve created a great video for your learners and deployed it on your chosen LMS (Learning Management System), tested it on a variety of computers with a variety of different web browsers and everything works fine. You feel like your done a good job – mission accomplished. However, you soon get feedback from learners that they can’t view the video on their computers. You check the different combinations of operating system and web browser and re-create their configurations but it still works for you and not for them. What’s going on?

Don’t worry, everyone who has worked with video on the Internet has been there at some time or other. More often than not this is a CODEC issue.

What’s a CODEC?

As some of you may already know, CODEC is an abbreviation of coder-decoder. Most simply put, it is the bit of your media player that converts the compressed video stream into uncompressed, watchable video. The most common CODECs in use on computers are: MPEG-2 (DVD), MPEG-4, FFmpeg, Theora and the new H.264 CODEC (Blu-Ray) which offers the best file size to quality ratio. Here is a list of current video CODECs.

What is a media container?

You’re probably already well aware that video comes in serveral flavours for the Internet. You probably heard of Flash Video, QuickTime, etc. The most commonly used media containers on the web are FLV, MOV, M4V, MP4 and AVI. For use with Flash and Internet in general, the most widely used and compatible is FLV (Flash video). As of Flash Player 10, Flash based video players can also support a variety of other media containers such as MP4, MOV and M4V.

How can I find out which media container a video file is using?

When you have a video file on your desktop or in a directory on your computer, it’s usually represented by a graphic icon something like one of these:

This does not represent the media container, it merely represents which default application (media player) your operating system will use to play the video when you double-click on it, for example Quicktime Player, Flash Player, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player (WMP) or Nero Showtime. You may have seen that the icons sometimes change when you install a new media player.

In order to find out which media container the video is in, you need to look at the file extensions. These usually look something like: video.mov, video.flv, video.wmv, video.mp4, etc. In Windows, by default, the file extensions are hidden so that inexperienced users don’t inadvertently change them, rendering them unplayable. If you want to know how to display file extensions in Windows and why this is useful, you can watch this tutorial.

What’s the most compatible way of deploying video on the Internet?

Personally, I think it’s unwise to ask learners to download and install media players or CODECs on their computers if they can’t play your chosen media format. Consider these points:

• Learners might not be using their own computer when they study, in fact, they might study on serveral computers at home, at work, at school, at university, at a library, etc. They’d have to download and install the media player or CODEC everywhere they went.
• Learners need administrator privileges to install software such as CODECs. The vast majority of computers at schools, universities, libraries and businesses only allow their IT guys to install software because of the security risks that it can entail.

The good news is that the hard work has already been done for you by big Internet companies such as Google and Yahoo! All you have to do is follow their lead. The most universal video format on the web today is Flash video, also known as FLV. It’s difficult to find a computer, these days, that doesn’t have a version of Flash Player already installed on it. If  it has Flash Player installed, it can play FLV video and the new Flash Player 10 also supports a number of other media containers – MOV, MP4, F4V, etc. – and supports H.264.

FLV also supports a number of useful things:

• FLV Cue Point data – This allows you to easily add dynamic captions to video. Dynamic means that the captions are stored separately as an easily editable XML file and can be changed or updated at any time without having to recode the entire video file. Here’s a starter tutorial for developers on how to deploy selectable multiple language subtitles with Flash Video. FLV Cue Points can also be used to trigger other events like playing a sound or animation, pausing the video and prompting the user to respond to something, and so on.
• Alpha transparency – This means that you can use “keying” (Chroma key), also known as green screen to make areas of video transparent so that you can layer it over different backgrounds. Lee Brimelow has recorded a video tutorial on the basics of including alpha transparency in Flash video using Adobe After Effects and Adobe Flash Professional CS3/CS4.
• It’s relatively easy to develop a custom media player in Flash that has specialised functions, for example a rolling transcript of the video dialogue, an on-screen menu system or any kind of interactivity, and an interface that matches the rest of your web site.

What’s the easiest way to deploy video in Moodle?

And finally, I’ve written a plugin module for Moodle, which leverages the very popular JW FLV Player by Jeroen Wijering. Once installed, it’s a matter of using the module wizard to select or upload the video you want to play and setting the player’s behaviour and appearance. It’s open source (free) of course and you can download it here. You can also see a variety of demos of it in action on my Moodle demo course (Login as a guest).

The Red One from Red

This article is a follow-up to my post, “Good quality audio”. Here, I’ll give a few tips aimed at new-comers to recording video for the web and how to get the best results. I’m assuming that, as a new-comer, you have very basic, low-budget equipment or are about to buy or borrow some. Obviously, something like the industry standard “Red One” from Red, starting at $17,500 for the body alone (not including lenses or recorder, although I’m sure they’ll give you a free t-shirt), is out of our budget.

A little personal video history

My introduction to recording video came when I was very young and my American uncle came to visit us in the UK. He brought an enormous VHS camcorder with him to record his visit for posterity and gave me, aged 13, the responsibility of being his documentary cameraman. Later, I went on to use the (enormous) old industry standard U-Matic video tape recorders, had some basic video recording and production training at art college, and eventually moved on to digital video with 8mm MiniDV recorders. The jump in picture quality from VHS, Betamax and U-Matic to MiniDV was astonishing. I’ve tried other formats since but, for the moment at least, I find that this format offers the best results for the money.

Why do I recommend MiniDV?

It’s an old format and surely the newer SD-Card or HDD video cameras are better, aren’t they?

In my opinion, it depends what you mean by “better”. The newer consumer camcorders are cheaper (sometimes), smaller, lighter, more robust and often, you can take video shot on them and upload it directly onto video sharing websites like YouTube, with no editing or conversion software necessary. It’s wonderful to be able to do that. The downside is that these camcorders use an extremely high rate of digital video compression so while the footage shot on them looks good in its original format, once you start to edit it and, necessarily, recode it, it degrades rapidly. The end result is often unwatchable. MiniDV, on the other hand, uses a low rate of compression (MPEG-2) so that it’s possible to do more editing, recoding and adding special effects and still maintain reasonably good picture quality. Apparently, the BBC still use MiniDV for a lot of its mobile “rough ‘n’ ready” video.  Be warned though, when you come to download video footage onto your computer, you’ll quickly fill up a good few Gigabytes of hard-disk space. You may want to consider installing bigger, faster (7,200 RPM minimum) hard-discs on your computer if you intend to do a lot of editing.

Some of the new hard disk drive and SD card camcorders now include higher bit rate recording in the newer H.264/AVC (Advanced Video Compression) format currently being promoted by Sony and Panasonic. It promises double the rate of compression for the same olour depth and image quality. Although it’s popularly being hailed as the new de facto CODEC, most professionals are still using the older MPEG-2 CODEC simply because it’s more mature, there’s much better software support for it and it takes much less time to render edited videos into a final master copy. For example, most of the Blue-Ray disc movies available today are MPEG-2 not H.264/AVC.

What should I look for in a video camera?

A budget 3CCD MiniDV camcorder

Since we’re on a low budget, my advice is to get the best MiniDV camcorder you can. Something that surprises me about a lot of consumer camcorders, even quite expensive ones, is the lack of microphone inputs so that you can use external microphones to record sound. Some consumer camcorders come with the label “semi-pro” and they usually have microphone inputs and sometimes a “shoe” on which you can attach specialised microphones. Sound is one of the most important parts of the video recording as it contains the speech and the sounds that objects might make. It often carries the “story” of a presentation. Of course, it is possible to record audio separately and manually synchronise the sound and video streams while editing but this is a time consuming extra task that you could really do without. Ideally, you want a stereo input jack so that you can use a stereo microphone or a pair of mono mics. See my article on good quality audio for more details about this.

Another important point with video cameras is the quality of the CCD (charged coupled device) chip. This is the light sensor that converts the light coming in through the camera lens into a digital video image. Needless to say, if the CCD chip is poor quality or has low light sensitivity, no amount of extra features or professional editing software can give you good quality video. The best quality chips use 3 CCD devices which give the best image quality and the best sensitivity, which is useful for shooting in low light conditions such as indoors.

You can find a number of suitable MiniDV 3CCD camcorders of various ages, conditions and prices on shopping sites such as Amazon and eBay. I’ve seen good cameras on eBay for as little as £40.

Update (19th July 2009): Now it looks like HDD camcorders are coming onto the second-hand market at an affordable price. I looked on eBay.co.uk and found quite a few good cameras selling at around the £200 (€230 or $330 US) price range. Before buying any camera, check with the camera manufacturer about what video compression settings the camera has and if they’re suitable for high-quality editing.

Don’t forget to budget for lighting

Even the best of video cameras can only work with the light you give them. Low light conditions give you poor, flat, grainy image quality so it’s well worth investing in at least three good lights. I say three lights because subjects lit with only one or two lights tend to look rather flat and lifeless. Most people who work in photography understand the three-point lighting system. It’s effective and with a little experimentation and trial and error, you can bring your video footage (and studio photography) to life. The principles are simple. You have three lights: a fill light, a key light and a back light. This arrangement ensures that every area of the subject is lit and not in shadow and also gives a 3D effect, making the subject look more life-like. It’s an advantage if the lights give off a broad spectrum of light (i.e. fluorescent lamps or something similar) and even better if you can control their luminosity (i.e you can dim them). You may even want to consider setting up something similar for your webcam if you do a lot of VoIP and video conferencing.

Three-point lighting

What about video editing?

When choosing the best video editing software, I think there’s a trade-off between usability and editing features. Professional video editing software allows you to do just about anything you like with your video rushes to get some really impressive results. You usually have the option of using “keying”, also known as “green screen”, to remove the background. Even things like good-looking custom titling can only be achieved with professional software but the problem is that it’s difficult for a novice to use. If you’re new to video editing or have only ever used software packages such as Windows Movie Maker (included with Windows) or iMovie (included with most Macs), professional editing suites like Adobe Premiere Pro (Windows and Mac), Sony Vegas Pro (Windows only) or Final Cut Studio (Mac only) can be daunting and can take weeks or even months to get to grips with. Luckily, they all do consumer versions with intuitive, easy to use features that allow you to start creating your mini epics within hours, if not minutes. The trade-off is that most of the features are set up as pre-set combinations, for ease of use, and are either difficult or impossible to adjust individual feature settings in them to get the specific results you might want. If you’re technically minded and willing to spend the time and money and you want complete control over your editing features, then the pro options are the ones to go for. For fast and not bad looking results, go for the cheaper consumer options. Almost all video editing software has a convenient option for producing video for the web. Even Quicktime pro*, currently at $29.99, can convert a number of compatible formats to MP4 (H.264) for web deployment on Flash Player or the Quicktime browser plugin. By the way, I don’t recommend publishing your videos to the WMV (Windows Media Video) format used by Windows Movie Maker. It’s very difficult to deploy on the web reliably and a lot of people using Mac or Linux operating systems won’t be able to view it at all. I’ll write another article on video formats and media containers soon.

* If you have Quicktime installed on your computer, you already have Quicktime Pro. All you need to do is buy a serial key from Apple to activate the media converter functions on it.

Plan and storyboard your presentation

I think getting physically good results in video is somewhat easier than in audio recording. Most camcorders today capture pretty good quality video so I think the most important thing to concentrate on is the storyline or how you storyboard your video presentation. It’s important to establish a context before going into detail. For example, if you’re doing an interview with a representative of an organisation, start with a short clip of the outside of their headquarters or something with their logo on before showing the interview. Also, don’t forget to introduce the representative and give a little background information about them before launching into the interview questions. All this is setting the context and it makes it much easier for your audience to follow who the person is and what is going on.

Your video clips, no matter how short, should also have a beginning, middle and end. I think it’s best to think of it as taking your viewers on a journey. Whether it’s a visual journey or a spoken one, it’s still a good idea to let your audience know where they’re going to go, then where they’re going and then where they’ve been. Try to maintain a sense of continuity and a logical progression from one scene to the next.

If possible, I recommend attending some kind of introductory course to video recording and editing. An experience professional can get you started, give you hands-on practice, teach you how to storyboard and edit, teach you the finer points of video technique, answer your questions and guide you toward producing some high quality and captivating videos.

Relates to: Moodle, SWFObject, JW FLV Player

I’ve spent quite some time experimenting with video in Moodle. I’ve been looking for a reliable way to deploy video as an e-learning resource that will work across all platforms: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OSX and Linux. So far, the most widely accepted video format has been Flash Video, otherwise known as FLV. FLV is used by most of the major media companies with a presence on the Internet, including Youtube,  Google, Yahoo!, CNN and the BBC to mention but a few.

I’ve found that Moodle, as it stands (versions 1.8 and 1.9), is not the easiest possible way to deploy FLV video. Furthermore, if you want to add captioning, subtitles, links, etc. it becomes so difficult that you need to call in a developer or somebody who’s pretty well informed about IT, web design and server-side scripting. Even something as simple as displaying an image before the video starts. It’s certainly not for the average teacher or course content developer!

Well, I’ve decided that there has to be an easier way. I’ve developed a new plugin module that deploys FLV video in as user-friendly a way as I can. I used the JW FLV Player because it’s the most powerful and versatile Internet based FLV Player at the moment and only required a small one-off licence fee of €30 to use it on a website. It has too many features to mention in this article but you can get a good idea of what it’s capable of in the FLV Player Activity Module documentation.

I have a demonstration of the Moodle FLV Player Activity Module installed on my learning management system. The demo course allows guest access so there’s no need to create an account. If you would like editing privileges so that you can see how easy it is to use, please contact me. Alternatively, if you are already a Moodle user with administrator privileges, you can download and install the module for yourself.

I’ve released the FLV Player Activity Module under the GPL open source licence, which means that it’s free and you can change it or add to it in any way you like. If you make any changes to it, please let me know what you’ve done and why. Equally, if there are any changes or adaptations that you’d like to see made, let me know. If it’s something that would benefit the whole community, I’ll most probably include it in the next release.

The FLV Player project is hosted on Google Code with tutorials and sample downloads. It’s entirely free and you can download and install it in your Moodle in a couple of minutes. Click here.

I have a demo course on my Moodle where you can view some examples of the FLV Player module in action and also view a tutorial video demonstration on how to use it. Click here and select “Login as a guest”. There is no need to create a user account.